Avengers: Infinity War

The Mad Titan, Thanos—reaver, conqueror, world-killer—is drawing closer to completing his genocidal quest to collect all six of The Infinity Stones. Remnants of the origin of the universe, each Stone is a well of immense cosmic power, each one is capable of controlling a specific aspect of reality. Should the Mad Titan manage to possesses all six of the Stones, assembling them on his golden Infinity Gauntlet, he will finally be able to impose his twisted, genocidal will upon all of creation. But fear not, True Believers, for while the fate of existence may hang in the balance, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers, still stand in the villain's way.

I've got a bunch of new reviews on deck right now, some new stuff, my 20 Most Influential List too, and also a couple of recent rewatches... this is one of the latter.

Avengers: Infinity War is Part One of a Two Part Cinematic Extravaganza, an event rooted in what is known in the world of comic books as a “Big Crossover.”

It's a regular thing in comics.

In 1984, Marvel Comics debuted the first Big Crossover.

It was called Secret Wars, and it brought all of its big names together, hero and villain alike, for a 12 issue self-contained limited series storyline that was basically a big “what if so-and-so fought so-and-so” type of thing.

The first of its kind, it was a really big deal.

With it's first issue, every other Marvel title saw their storylines suddenly jump ahead a year, and the mystery of what happened to the heroes during that missing time was then revealed in the pages of the 12 issues of the Secret Wars mini-series. However, when that year was over, for the most part, it turned out that there really weren't that many big changes that resulted from the story. In fact, the only really big thing that did happen was the first appearance of Spider-man’s black costume, which would eventually turn out to be a malicious alien symbiote called Venom, a character that is about to have its third movie released starring Tom Hardy, and when that comes out, I may finally break down and watch all of them. Maybe. But other than that, a few small changes aside, the story had very little impact on most of the greater Marvel Universe. Like Laff-a-lympics, Secret Wars was really more about the fun of seeing the characters all together, and in weird groups, with the heroes fighting villains that they normally wouldn't fight.

There was this, of course...

The first Secret Wars took place early on during the time that Tony Stark's alcoholism had forced him to give up being Iron Man, and the armor was being worn by James "Rhodey" Rhodes. This wasn't common knowledge in the wider superhero circles, so scenes like this played out in multiple titles.

What makes it kind of weird and gross, is that despite the fact that Iron Man in Secret Wars was James Rhodes, the action figure version, both the one from 1984 and the new version in 2024, are clearly meant to be Tony Stark...

It's instinctual, y'see. It's their default setting...

Anyway, the comic was a huge success, and it sold like hot cakes. So much so that it spawned the aformentioned toy line, many of which I owned at the time. Some of which may still be at my mom‘s house right now. Here’s as old commercial from 1984, one that boldy warns us that “Marvel’s supervillains are coming!”

Yikes!

Secret Wars was so successful as a new business model, that a year later, DC Comics introduced its own first big crossover titled “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” This time out, the story had a huge impact on all of the DC comic book characters, as it attempted to restructure the decades long and incredibly random DC Universe into one long story all set in one shared universe. To accomplish this, the story had to rewrite several long held origins, it changed the power levels of several major characters, and it even wiped out a ton of old stories from the official canon. It was a gamble, doing this massive restructuring, but it paid off, as again, financially speaking, it was a huge success. Huge.

Narratively speaking, it was ultimately a huge failure. Eventually, this storyline was wiped out, and suddenly there was a multiverse again. But that was wiped out later and one universe was made the official line again. But then that was wiped out and everything was rewritten, and what followed that was then wiped out and rewritten too. The old stories were all added back in again, even if the age gap of some of the characters made even less sense now, but that’s not really a new issue in comics. Then, thanks to the Flash screwing things up, it all exploded, and there was a multiverse once again, but this time, there were only 52 different universes in total, instead of an infinite number. But that was eventually destroyed too… and now, I’m not sure where it’s at. I think the multiverse just recently collapsed back into just one universe again. Maybe. It doesn't matter.

The point is, DC has vacillated back and forth between it all being just one universe or everything being it's own thing in a multiverse ever since, all in an attempt to course correct from the continually outward rippling ramifications of what would eventually be known as “The first Crisis.”

But that doesn’t really matter, at least, not as far as Crossovers are concerned. After this pair of wins, Marvel and DC only knew one thing… It was time to beat this Crossover Golden Goose to death.

Now, every year since then, there’s a couple of smaller crossovers, each one contained to the respective corners of a couple of the marquee characters. And every two to three years or so, there’s one big line-wide crossover, one supposedly meant to shake up the status quo of the whole comic book universe. It's a tradition now, which means that, yeah, there’s been some ups and there’s been some downs. There’s been some wins and there’s been some loses. There’s been some successes and there's been more than a few failures. There’s been stories that mattered, and there's been a whole bunch that didn’t matter at all. In the end, they’re all pretty much the same idea… a massive threat is coming, slowly gathering strength, and almost too late, the heroes of the universe gather together to try to stop it, forging new friends and new enemies along the way, all while learning a little bit about themselves, and each other, all in effort to save themselves, their loved ones, everyone else, and all of creation.

The Infinity Gauntlet was one such big crossover.

Published by Marvel Comics in 1991, the story was mainly told in a six-issue limited series written by Jim Starlin and pencilled by the legendary George Pérez, and also Ron Lim. It was such a huge story, that it bled over from its own title into the titles of many of the characters’ monthly comic books, something that it is pretty common place now, but at the time was a fairly new idea, as DC and Marvel has since discovered that the sucker completists out there will end up buying every single title in order to read the whole story.

On occasion, I am one of those suckers… on occasion… but sometimes, it really is worth it, as some of those side books will tell some great stories… Secret Invasion is a good example. Dark Reign had a lot of them too. The second Secret Wars had some phenomenal side books.

So, the Infinity Gauntlet tells the story of Thanos, an Eternal who hails from the colony of Eternals on Saturn’s moon, Titan, hence the alias “The Mad Titan.” He is a nihilistic alien conqueror with insane plans for the universe.

Thanos was created for Marvel by Jim Starlin in 1973. The characater kicked around a bit, sometimes seen flying his own personal helicopter, while fighting such marquee names as Hellcat...

The character didn't really find his his true role until the day Jim Starlin began writing the Silver Surfer in 1990. There, he and Ron Lim started to lay the seeds for a new story, one that slowly developed over a couple of years on the edges of the Marvel Universe, before finally culminating in the story that is The Infinity Gauntlet. Another big hit, the Infinity Gauntlet was not just financially successful, but its influence is still felt in modern day Marvel comics. It’s the story that made the MCU into the most successful mega-franchise in cinematic history.

One very large reason for the comic's success is because George Pérez was brought in to share art duties with Ron Lim. Perez is basically the big-time famous king shit artist when it comes to comic book artists. He was the first comic book artist whose work I was able to recognize immediately on sight. He passed away at the age of 67, due to complications from pancreatic cancer on May 6, 2022.

R.I.P. to a legend.

At the start of the story in the comics, Thanos has already collected all six of the Infinity Gems (they’re gems in the comics. In the movies, they’re stones), and he has attached them to his giant gauntlet, which he wears kind of like how Michael Jackson used to wear a single glove, except Thanos’ glove is shiny gold, instead of sparkly silver. He calls it The Infinity Gauntlet. With the combined power of the Infinity Gems, Thanos has now become "like a god.” And so, being a newly minted deity, he can finally accomplish that which he desires most in all the universe...

To win the heart of Mistress Death.

Mistress Death is the living embodiment of the concept of death in the Marvel Universe. She’s also a skeleton in a hooded purple robe with big boobs. Thanos loves her sooooooo much.

So much.

Unfortunately, Mistress Death finds Thanos to a preening and unimpressive try-hard and a bore. There’s just no spark, y’know? And when Thanos uses the power of the Infinity Gauntlet to create a fake girlfriend to show off in front of Mistress Death, and to let her know that her rejection doesn't bother him, she's just like: "you loser" and walks away.

Thanos tries to pretend like it doesn't hurt, but... it hurts.

So, Thanos is basically a giant purple man-baby who can’t handle rejection at all, and this makes him mad like the big purple incel he is. Desperate to impress his one true love, he uses the powers of his infinity gauntlet to erase half the life in the universe, but Mistress Death is so fucking over it.

Unfortunately for Thanos, his actions causes Hero of the Universe, Adam Warlock, an artificially-created cosmic being genetically engineered to be the next evolution of humanity, as well as the assembled might of Earth's remaining heroes, to band together and try to stop him, which they eventually do.

So, at this point, you probably have some questions, and your first question is probably… Why is Thanos such a huge fucking loser? Well, as we can see in the real world around us, men who incessantly crave power and wealth can only ever be gigantic fucking losers. You can't want the one without being the other, because if you're not the latter, than you really don't give a shit about the former. Much like how it's not possible to be both a good person with a soul, someone who doesn't deserve to feel the steely kiss of the guillotine on their neck, AND a billionaire at the same, that's just how it works.

Your second question is probably... why did Thanos have the Infinity Gauntlet be a big shiny golden glove? And the answer is... because he’s fancy, that’s why.

Your third question is probably a more reasonable… why is Thanos purple? And that's because traditonally in comic books, heroes are red and blue and villains are green and purple. This was due to cheap paper and cheaper inks back in the day, and it needed to be easy to tell them apart. It's not a hard and fast rule anymore, but it's still pretty prevalent, it's almost instinctual at this point, really.

And finally, I bet your fourth question is... why are the Infinity Stones different colors in the movie than the Infinity Gems were in the comic?

That one is easy.

See, the Stones are different in the movies than they were in the comics because originally, they weren’t meant to be Infinity Stones at all. That whole idea came later. Simple as that. This is an answer for a lot of things that are in the MCU, but are generally different in the movies than they were in the comics, or maybe got mentioned off-handedly once in one of the earlier movies, but appeared in a later one completely different… it’s because the movies made a lot of big decisions on the fly, and somehow, shit just worked out... for the most part. In a nutshell, this particular pyramid was built upside down, understand? So let it go.

In the films of the MCU, the Space Stone first appeared in Captain America: First Avenger as The Tesseract. The Tesseract was an immensely powerful artifact in the shape of a cube. At the time, everyone naturally assumed that The Tesseract was the Cosmic Cube, the thing Hellcat and Thanos were fighting over in the picture I posted above. The Cosmic Cube is an extremely powerful item with the ability to rewrite reality, and it’s something that often pops up in Captain America comics, especially when he’s fighting the Red Skull, and since the Red Skull was the bad guy in the First Avenger, it made sense. But nope, it was the Space Stone, and it later turned out that it also gave Carol Danvers, the cosmic hero known as Captain Marvel, her powers.

The Mind Stone turned out to be the power source of Loki’s staff in The Avengers, which he used to enslave several people, including the Archer Avenger, Hawkeye, when he invaded New York City at the head of Thanos’ army, an act that prompted the original formation of the Avengers. In the aftermath, Loki‘s staff was stolen by Hydra agents, an off-shoot organization of the Nazis who had infiltrated SHIELD as a result of Operation Paperclip—a real life event that took place in the wake of WWII, where we grabbed as many Nazi scientists and their work as we could, so the Russians couldn't, and then put them to work for the United States. This is how we managed to get to the moon, honestly, it was all thanks to Walt Disney's best friend, Wernher von Braun. But I digress... anyway, the Mind Stone was then used not only to create the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, it ultimately ended up bonding with Tony Stark’s personal A.I., Jarvis, when it was embedded in the forehead of the android Avenger known as The Vision, giving him life.

The Reality Stone, known at the time as the Aether, was hidden eons ago in an unknown realm by Bor, the father of Odin, who is of course, the father of Thor, after he defeated the Dark Elves. When the king of the Dark Elves, Malekith the Accursed, reawakened after 5000 years, he stole the Aether from Thor’s girlfriend, Dr. Jane Foster, who accidentally ingested it after she had randomly fallen through an unstable wormhole, and then decided to touch this weird pulsating red ooze, as you do. After a big brouhaha, Thor took the Reality Stone to Taneleer Tivan, an Elder of the Universe known as The Collector, for safe keeping in The Collector's collection of unique galactic oddities and one-of-a-kind items of interest, that was located in the outlaw colony known as Knowhere, which is inside the giant severed head of a long-dead space god that is floating in space.

Taneleer Tivan is who the Guardians of the Galaxy later tried to sell the Power Stone to, when it was known as the Orb, but were unable to, mostly because one of the Collector's slaves decided... fuck it, I'm out, and everything went pear-shaped. Eventually, the Guardians ended up leaving the Power Stone on the Planet Xander, in the care of the Nova Corps, who are basically space cops, where it stayed until Thanos showed up and decimated the planet.

The Time Stone, of course, is the beating heart within the Eye of Agamotto, the mystical necklace of power worn by Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, who is currently the man known as Dr. Strange.

And as for the Soul Stone… well, that’s a secret only one woman in the galaxy knows, and that woman is Gamorra, a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, daughter of Thanos, and the deadliest woman alive. And only one other woman knows that she knows it too, Nebula, Gamorra's sister, a hot-headed cyborg with a hard-on for killing her father, Thanos. Gamorra telling Nebula that she knows where the Soul Stone is located is a mistake that will loom large later in the story.

Thanos himself first appeared in the MCU in the End Credits scene in the first Avengers movie, but he wasn’t a fully realized character until Josh Brolin played him in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. This is when the MCU first became all about the Infinity Stones, as this is when it finally became clear what Thanos was up to.

And now, with this movie, Avengers: Infinity War, the chickens have finally come home to roost for the MCU, for Thanos is gathering all of the stones to him, and if he does, he will become a…

And so…

Having acquired the Power Stone from the planet Xandar, Thanos and his lieutenants—Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, and Corvus Glaive, together known as The Black Order—intercept the spaceship that is carrying the surviving Asgardians after Asgard's destruction in Thor Ragnarok. After beating Thor, Thanos kills Loki, who has the Tesseract, then extracts the Space Stone from it, and overpowers the Hulk for funsies. Thanos also kills Heimdall, the guardian of the Bifrost, the rainbow bridge to Asgard, an interstellar gateway across all of creation, after he sends Hulk to Earth using the last remnants of his magic. Hulk crashes into the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York City, the home of Dr. Strange, and reverts back to Bruce Banner. Bruce warns Dr. Strange and Wong of Thanos's plan to destroy half of all sentient life in the universe.

In the film, Thanos is motivated by the idea that wiping out half of all sentient life in the galaxy will lead to a paradise, as resources will now be abundant, instead of having him simply trying to impress a sexy skeleton with boobs, because… well, I mean, some things are better left in the comics, y’know?

Anyway, Dr. Strange brings in Tony Stark, Iron Man, just before Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian arrive in NYC in their space ship to retrieve the Time Stone from Dr. Strange. A space ship hovering over Greenwich Village draws the attention of the young Peter Parker, Spider-man, while he is on a field trip to the city with his high school class. The Ebony Maw, unable to take the Time Stone due to Dr. Strange's enchantment, kidnaps the Sorcerer, and flies away on his spaceship. Iron Man and Spider-man are barely able to sneak aboard in time.

Meanwhile, the Guardians of the Galaxy respond to the Asgardian ship's distress call and rescue Thor. Together, they surmise that Thanos is after the Reality Stone, which Taneleer Tivan has on Knowhere. They decide to split up, as Thor, Rocket, and Groot go to Nidavellir, because Thor needs a new hammer after Mjolnir was destroyed, and that's the only place that makes them. Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, and Mantis go to Knowhere, only to discover that Thanos already has the Reality Stone. Thanos takes Gamora and vanishes, forcing her to discloses the Soul Stone's location in order to save Nebula from being tortured. Gamorra takes Thanos to the planet Vormir, where the Soul Stone's keeper, a cursed apparition that was once the Red Skull, tells Thanos he can only acquire the Soul Stone if he first sacrifices something he loves. Thanos sacrifices Gamora, throwing her off the cliff to her death, once and for all proving his love for her, and as a result, earns the Stone.

Meanwhile, Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive ambush Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, and the android, the Vision, who are in Edinburgh having a secret lovers rendezvous, because they’re dating now. Yep, Wanda is dating the robot, which is how you know this is a kid’s movie, because not one person makes a walking vibrator joke. Not once! Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive are after the Mind Stone, which is in the Vision's forehead. Luckily, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson, currently outlaw heroes after the events of Civil War, show up and rescue them. They all take shelter at the Avengers’ Compound in upstate New York with James Rhodes and Bruce Banner. Vision says the only way to ensure that Thanos doesn’t get all the stones is for Wanda to destroy the Mind Stone, which would kill him at the same time, but Wanda refuses. Captain America suggests going to Wakanda, because if there's anyone who might be able to remove the Stone without killing Vision, its a teenage girl genius in Wakanda, and so that is where they go, and that is where the aforementioned Shuri, as well as the Black Panther, Okoye, M'baku, and Bucky Barnes are all waiting.

Meanwhile, Nebula manages to escape captivity, and tips off the remaining Guardians that Thanos will be returning to his destroyed homeworld, Titan, to meet the Ebony Maw for the Time Stone. Not yet knowing that Gamorra is dead, they all agree to meet there to save her.

Meanwhile, Iron Man, Spider-man, and Dr. Strange’s sentient cloak, manages to blow the Ebony Maw out into space, just like at the end of the movie Aliens, and rescue Dr. Strange. The trio crash-land on Titan, where they meet Peter Quill, Drax, and Mantis, and together, they plan an ambush. Using the Time Stone, Dr. Strange travels up and down the timeline, and tells them that out of 14,000,605 possible futures, there is only one in which the Avengers will win.

Meanwhile, The Black Order arrives in Wakanda with the might of Thanos’ army behind them, and shit gets real, but not as real as when Thanos arrives on Titan.

The waiting heroes, along with Nebula, manage to very nearly take down Thanos, until Peter Quill realizes that Thanos has killed Gamorra, his girlfriend, and in his anger, he fucks up the whole plan. As a result, Thanos then fucks all of them up. Grievously wounding Iron Man in a big ol’ throw down--where Thanos hits Iron Man with a moon at one point--Dr Strange offers him the Time Stone in exchange for sparing Iron Man’s life. Thanos agrees and leaves them on Titan, defeated and broken, with five of the six Infinity Stones now in his possession.

The last Stone, the Mind Stone, is in Wakanda.

Meanwhile, in Wakanda, the Avengers, plus T'Challa and the Wakandan forces, along with a timely arrival by Thor, Rocket, and Groot, are holding their own against Thanos’ army, while Shuri works to extract the Mind Stone from Vision. But all their efforts are for naught as Thanos arrives on the field, making short work of them all. With no other option, Vision convinces a reluctant Wanda to destroy him and the Mind Stone, and she does so, but Thanos just uses the Time Stone to reverse her actions. He then knocks her aside, and rips the stone from Vision's forehead, killing him again. Now, Thanos is finally able to complete the Infinity Gauntlet.

And that’s it.

With a snap of Thanos’ fingers, half of all life across the universe disintegrates, including Bucky Barnes, T'Challa, Groot, Wanda Maximoff, Sam Wilson, Mantis, Drax, Peter Quill, Dr. Strange, Peter Parker, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury. Nick Fury manages to send an emergency signal on a modified pager before disintegrating, and it flashes the sigil of Captain Marvel as he turns to dust.

So, with Tony Stark and Nebula stranded on Titan, and Bruce Banner, M'Baku, Okoye, James Rhodes, Rocket Raccoon, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Thor the only heroes still alive on the Wakandan battlefield, our heroes are all defeated, and Thanos sits on his porch on a remote planet, and watches the sun rise, content, satisfied, his great work done.

Obviously, I loved this film.

This should surprise no one. I am unapologetically in the bag for the MCU, and this film delivered everything I wanted and more.

After a years long buildup over the course of 18 movies, Infinity War somehow managed to bring it all together in a perfect cap to the long-gestating over-arching story, all while showcasing everything that is good about these big comic book crossovers, with all of the excitement of everyone meeting and interacting, not to mention the big set pieces and the huge shake-ups to the status quo… it’s exciting and fun, and perfectly builds off everything that has come before. It’s fantastic.

I loved it.

There are many moments that I loved, but one in particular is how Thanos’ introduction very clearly explains what a threat he is, which is part of the reason why he is the best villain in the MCU, and it does it by playing off the moment in the Avengers when Hulk beats up Loki. A mirrored moment, this time, Thanos proves he is not only more than equal to the hulk in strength, but he also actually knows how to fight, whereas Hulk only knows how to use his brute strength. As a result, Thanos takes the Hulk apart with a rapid series of quick punches, handily beating Hulk down, leaving the audience as stunned as the Jade Giant. At that moment, you totally understand the threat that Thanos poses, and so as a result, Hulk’s fall into the Sanctorum, his breathless warning of what's to come, still clearly reeling from his beating, is a perfect lead-in to the opening credits.

Also, a very small blink and you'll miss it moment, but I really love when Steve Rogers almost manages to takes control of the Infinity Gauntlet, as he and Thanos wrestle for it. Much like the brief moment in Age of Ultron where he almost lifts Mjolnir, it proves how worthy Steve Rogers truly is, and the look on Thanos’ face when he realizes this is fantastic. It doesn't work out, but still, that and the train reveal are perfect Captain America moments.

The film also repeats Spider-man’s “really old movie” joke from Civil War, but this time, they use Aliens instead of Empire, and sadly, yes… it’s still stings, because it's completely true. Much Like Empire Strikes Back, Aliens is a really old film. Infinity War was set in 2018, and Peter Parker is 17 years old then, and Aliens was released in 1986, which was 32 years ago. Just to illustrate how old that is, if you were 17 in, say… 1991, then a movie that would have been as similarly old as the movie Aliens is to Peter Parker, then it would’ve been released in 1959.

That’s old.

Now, there are some people out there who will complain that you “need to watch all of the films to understand what’s happening” and to that I say this...

Get a real problem.

Also, you should probably never admit in public that you can’t follow what’s happening in what is basically a big kid’s movie, because it just makes you look dumb. It's not hard to follow, you're just throwing a temper tantrum in a movie that you don't have to watch. Instead of asking "what's happening?" ask yourself why you're such a whiny baby. Also, while I do believe that it’s a better experience if you watch all the films, because that's fun and awesome, you absolutely do not have to do that at all, because again, the plot just isn’t that deep, and the characters are pretty clear about who they are. But mostly I have to wonder, if you don’t want to watch all the other films, then what the fuck are you doing here watching this one? Everyone knows this film is like the penultimate chapter in a long story. Why would you even go to this film if you aren't interested in the story? It's like picking up a fantasy novel in a bookstore, skimming the second to last chapter, and then tossing it aside, like "tsk... this is dumb." What's wrong with you? Go do something else. I promise you, it’s fine to say that you don’t like this sort of thing and to then watch a different movie instead, dummy.

There's literally hundreds to choose from.

In the end, this film isn't deep. It doesn't have a lot to say about society or the world or anything like that. It's just fun. That's it. The definition of a big budget sci-fi/fantasy action extravaganza, it was absolutely a blast. It’s also the first part of a two-parter, ending in a huge cliffhanger, so this one is also mainly about loss and sacrifice, and I love that.

I especially love that, for a whole new generation of fans, the ending is now their version of what we experienced during the “I am your father” scene from Empire Strikes back, followed by Boba Fett flying away with Han. Fans like to talk a lot of shit about how they hate "obvious" plots, and how they want new twists and turns, and "non-traditional" stories, but judging by the reactions I saw and read after this film's release, people were not expecting this ending, and it rocked them. I love that. The tears in the theatre as the credits rolled, people, I'm telling you, the sound of the tears…?

It was beautiful.

That's just good story-telling, and it made for a real good time at the movies. For me, the worst part was having to wait a whole year for Part Two.